


Blink & You'll Miss It

by teenuviel1227



Series: All of Time & Space [1]
Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Companion!Pil, Doctor Who AU, Doctor!Jae, Fluff, Future Dopil, M/M, Time Travel AU, Weeping Angels - Freeform, bestfriends, jaepilweek2018, unrequited romantic love but lots of mutual love and understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 19:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14196396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenuviel1227/pseuds/teenuviel1227
Summary: Jae is a Time Lord who meets renowned pianist Kim Wonpil and takes him on an adventure of a lifetime--spanning decades and space, on the hunt for a very specific brand of weeping angel: one that moves when no one’s looking, quiet as a shadow, a thief in the night.





	Blink & You'll Miss It

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, everyone! This is for Day 1 of JaePil Week, the theme of which is Time Travel. :D
> 
> This is connected to [The Boy Who Waited](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13868178/chapters/31902909) which I wrote for Day 1 of Jaehyungparkian week and will also be connected to the Day 1 fic of DoPil week in March. So I highly recommend you go read that before or after reading this to better understand what happens. 
> 
> This happens before the Jaehyungparkian timeline. 
> 
> Yes, this was based off of the Ponds’ departure (The Angels Take Manhattan) and Blink, the 10th Doctor episode with Carrie Mulligan. 
> 
> If you guys have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m hosting a [fan art/fan fic fest over here](https://twitter.com/day6sailing/status/968701090828046337) along with a bunch of awesome people and this week is Jaehyungparkian week. Come join the fun! 
> 
>  
> 
> [Twitter](http://twitter.com/teenuviel1227)  
> [Blog](http://teenuviel1227.wordpress.com)  
> [Tumblr](http://teenuviel1227.tumblr.com)  
> [Curious Cat](http://curiouscat.me/teenuviel1227)
> 
>  
> 
> I'll correct typos later :)

It’s the longest trip back into the TARDIS that Jae’s ever had to make in all of his years, all of his lifetimes since he’d stolen his ship, had left his people behind--in all of that time, he’d never had anyone like Wonpil who so closely approximated the feeling of being _home_ , of being grounded in the present, of being some _when_ as well as somewhere. The wind blows cold across the field, the large-boughed trees swaying in the wind--and there is his beloved blue box as he had left it, and yet nothing is the same.

Last time he’d seen it, his heart wasn’t aching. Last time, he’d felt its heavy wooden doors under his touch, he and Wonpil had been arm-in-arm as they walked out and off onto another great adventure. They  had come so close, _so_ close to getting away. And in a way, they had, but it was like trying to step into a river twice: the thing he’d wanted to save and the thing he’d been able to were two things he’d mistaken for each other, two completely different things.

Now, he finds himself thinking of that last night that they’d spent together, only a little over twenty-four hours ago--a lifetime ago, now, with Wonpil sitting at the piano and playing Claire de Lune after they’d had a hearty, homemade dinner, one that they’d prepared together: Wonpil taking care of the chicken and the tteok, Jae taking care of the soup and the rice. Jae remembers the sight of Wonpil as he sat up by the grand piano--the first big change Jae has allowed himself to make to the TARDIS in almost fifty years--his glass of white wine gleaming in the light as they travelled through time and space, off to what they hadn’t known would be their last adventure together. Bright smile, deep brown eyes, nimble fingers dancing across the keys, in each subtle glance a question: _do you like this song? Shall I keep going?_

It was at once, the worst and the best night that Jae can remember with Wonpil. _Is_ , he corrects himself--he’ll always think of Wonpil in the present-tense, he promises, a part of him wilting, lurching with pain as he realizes again the painful truth of being a Time Lord: everything eventually fades into the past. Everything eventually becomes spoken of as _was._

The night before is both precious and painful. There is the laughter that he’ll always associate with Wonpil, there’s the ease that they have with each other, the playfulness that’s almost second nature. But also, there’s the pain of Wonpil’s confession, of the secret he’d so been burdened with--and Jae’s response, the response that he’d had to have, that he’s had all of these years for so many of the people that he’s otherwise adored.

 _If I was human_ , _then maybe._

_If this wasn’t my life._

_If it wasn’t dangerous._

Underneath it all the truth: if I wasn’t who I am, if I could love you that way which isn’t any less than this deep friendship that we have.

And then there was--is?--the kiss, which Jae can still feel on his lips: warm, sweet, like Chardonnay and something else. The thing he feels most guilty about--he’d liked it, it had been so long since he’d been touched, been held like that, but it wasn’t his to give, not when his two hearts were of two minds about anything, most especially someone as wonderful as Wonpil.

 _If,_ he thinks as he takes a breath and slips the key into the TARDIS door, letting himself in. He feels a pang of pain, a surge of grief as the door swings open and reveals the TARDIS just as they’d left it, like they (the two of them, hand-in-hand, still laughing over the adventure, still high on each others’ company, still flirty and candid and joyful in triumph) were coming back to it any minute now. Wonpil’s sweater hanging over the reading chair, the piece for Claire de Lune still sitting on the sheet music stand, his glasses still on the end table by the table at which they ate their meals.

He sighs, sitting at the piano, letting his fingertips drift over the keys, playing the first few bars of music as if playing the melody could bring Wonpil back to him--he feels tears start to slip down his cheeks, knowing that the reason the weeping angels are so deadly is precisely this: you couldn’t cross hairs or everything would blow up, you would rip time apart. He couldn’t go to Wonpil and Wonpil couldn’t go to him, at least not out of their ordinary timelines.

He can’t visit Wonpil in whatever time he’s in precisely because he _doesn’t._ Wonpil’s future is the past. Jae’s future is everything else.

He sighs, resting his head against the keys.

His one wish, he thinks, playing a soft C-chord, is for Wonpil to be happy where he is, to bloom where he’s been reluctantly planted, to find love that can be given back to him the way that he deserves.

_Please._

 

“What do you mean a _weeping angel_?” Wonpil asks, raising an eyebrow as Jae fumbles with the TARDIS console. “Are you actually suggesting that the string of kidnappings over a span of two hundred years is being done by a biblical...thing? I didn’t take you for a Bible-thumper, Doc.”

Jae grins, looks up at Wonpil over the edge of his glasses. “Well. Who better fit for the job of whooshing people across time and space, leaving them to the clutches of the time, feeding off of the energy of time-atom dislocation?”

Wonpil grins. “You?”

“Touche.” Jae laughs. “But see, these aren’t your run of the mill angels, PirriePirrieWonpirrie.”

Wonpil grins, watching Jae thoughtfully from where he’s sitting at the upright piano-- _my_ piano, he thinks--Jae had installed in the TARDIS some time ago (months? years? Wonpil isn’t sure, what with all the time travel they’d been doing).

“Are they evil? Are they going to fight us like the Sontarans?”

Jae snorts.

“You _wish_ they were going to fight us like the Sontarans. Weeping Angels are much, much worse. For one thing, they’re incredibly tricky. They look like statues of angels, see--and the thing about them is they can’t move as long as you’re looking at them, but the moment you turn around: _boom_ \--”--Jae snaps a finger--”--they get you.”

“Like a really, really bad game of don’t blink,” Wonpil says, taking a sip from the wine glass.

“Exactly,” Jae says, nodding. “Except you can’t even do that for very long because every image of a weeping angel becomes a weeping angel onto itself and if you stare long enough, an image starts to form in your mind’s eye and they get _in_ your head, they don’t even have to get to you to hurt you--”

“--Christ,” Wonpil says, a shudder running down his spine.

“I know right.”

“Well what if they _do_ get you?” Wonpil asks. “Do they tear you up? Digest you alive? Turn you into one of them?”

“They displace you in time,” Jae says, sighing as he pulls the lever: they’re headed to 1887, Scotland, an open field in Shieldaig. “And then feed off of the energy. You’re trapped in that timeline, set to live your life out normally, so to speak. No shortcuts, no going back--”

“--even for you?” Wonpil asks, dubiously.

“Even for me,” Jae nods. “The thing about Time Lords is we adhere to our own timeline too, just as humans do, as all of nature’s creatures do. Ours is all jumbled up is all. If say, you got lost--god forbid--and I tried to go to wherever you were, I wouldn’t find you for the precise reason that I _didn’t_ find you. I wouldn’t be able to go to you because I met you sometime in the future, because the Angels will have eaten up all the possibilities for an alternate reality, for you to skip through in the TARDIS, for your timeline to deviate. As soon as I put you into the TARDIS and tried to dislocate you in time, the TARDIS would overheat and we’d both be stranded.”

Wonpil shrugs, turning back to the piano. “Exciting.”

Jae grins. That’s what he loves so much about Wonpil--that subtle fearlessness under his meek facade, that graceful courage.

“Sure, yeah. Also--potentially deadly.”

Wonpil stands up, downs the rest of his wine. “Is it, really?”

Jae grins, nodding. “Why do you always talk to me like I’m exaggerating.”

Wonpil raises an eyebrow, walking a little closer to Jae, who’s leaning on the console, now, finishing his glass of whisky. “Because you usually are.”

“Touche.” Jae grins

“Jae,” Wonpil begins, looking up at him, meeting his eye. “I think there’s something I need to tell you before we get to, well, tomorrow.”

Jae smiles, finishing off his glass whiskey.

“Shoot.”

 

They win, for the most part. After a long, terrifying chase down the estate, they finally trick the angels into getting into one of the smaller anterooms, an empty space with only four walls, Jae and Wonpil standing in the middle as bait and then lunging as soon as the angels reached out--now, the angels are looking at each other, the angels are stuck there, they themselves their own prison: always watching one another, unable to look away, unable to move an inch at least until the lanterns burn out, after which none of it would matter because there’d be people to do the watching.

Jae knows, has seen the building renovated in the future, the angels shipped off elsewhere in exactly the same formation, along with the plank of marble on which they stood stone-still for no better reason other than they refused to budge.

“It’s a win,” Jae says, breathless and relieved as he and Wonpil stand by the door, for once, neither of them scared, neither of them afraid to lose the other to time. Thoughtlessly, like it’s second nature, he slips an arm over Wonpil’s shoulders and they walk toward the staircase.

They still haven’t talked about the night before and Jae doesn’t want to start--he doesn’t want to give Wonpil his answer because he knows human beings and their fickle hearts, knows that once he tells Wonpil his secret, his truth that he’s afraid he can’t love anyone _like that_ , can’t love him the way that he suspects human beings want to be loved (the way that so many of his companions had told him they love him), he’s going to leave. He’s going to say he’d like to go back home to Seoul, thank you very much. He’d like to go back to being Kim Wonpil, renowned piano prodigy.

And then Jae would be alone again. The Doctor, alone: a mad man in an old, blue box.

He tries to focus on other things. If Wonpil won’t ask, then he won’t tell him.

They’re in a celebratory mood--the angels were hiding out in an old, rundown imperial building sequestered on the outskirts of one of the older towns. It was terrifying when there were bloodthirsty, ancient statues that you couldn’t stop looking at for fear of them trying to jettison you somewhere you didn’t belong the moment that you blinked. But now that that’s over, now that they know exactly where those _fuckers_ are--as Wonpil had taken to calling them, the profanities funny words in such a gentle-looking mouth--it’s a different story altogether.

It’s scenic, beautiful. The early morning light turns everything a beautiful shade of illuminated pink. The moon is still in the sky, a papery outline of itself but still silver enough to be quite a sight. The sun is peeking out from over the hills: the graceful in-between. The lake looks illuminated, its surface a glassy cascade of color.

They decide to linger a little, taking a seat by the edge of the water. Wonpil leans back against Jae, the way that both of them have felt so comfortable doing. It’s strange, Jae thinks, pressing a cheek softly against the top of Wonpil’s head: although he hadn’t felt that brush of eroticism, that surge of want and desire that he’d last known before the Time Wars, before the destruction of the Time Lords, of his people, if he had to choose anyone to marry for everything else, he’d choose Wonpil. And really, he thinks now, feeling Wonpil’s warmth against him as they look at the beautiful view, would it really be so bad for him to choose a permanent companion? Did love always have to be so wanting, so fiery, so reaching?

Can’t love also be subtle as air--just as invisible, just as necessary?

_If Wonpil is okay with it, then we’ll do it._

“Pil,” Jae starts. “I’ve been thinking about last night--”

“--it’s okay, Jae,” Wonpil says, softly. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it. Let’s just enjoy the moment.”

 

From the moment that they met--the first time that he’d seen the angels again after centuries, at that orchestra hall in Seoul--Jae knew that he and Wonpil would get along. It was always easy with the two of them: both of them accepting that each other’s jokes would be merciless, and that their mercy with each other would have no bounds. Both of them knowing that they could tell each other everything without expecting the other to yield the same kind of confidence--which oddly enough, made the other yield just that.

“I saw you staring at me,” Wonpil had said to him that first night, grinning as Jae turned to look at him during the after party.

Music skimmed through the air. Wonpil looked dashing in his suit, which, however garrish the color, was cut with amazing precision.

“It’s because your hot pink suit is a travesty. It’s so wrong it’s right. What mad scientist-slash-genius did you pay to come up with that?” Jae shot back.

Wonpil grinned. Jae felt himself ease up. Wonpil had a good smile: wide, sincere, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. Wonpil shrugged before reaching over to one of the waiters and plucking a glass of champagne for Jae off of a tray.

“I lost a bet.”

 

Jae is sleepless for what feels like years, lying in his bed whiskey-drunk and yet not drunk enough for slumber to overtake him. The TARDIS is worried about him. The TARDIS is angry at time, swears to herself that she won’t let him take another companion again, promises that this is the last time. There have been other companions before--Sammy, Jamie, Bernard, Eric--but all of them had been lost to kinder circumstances (parallel worlds where they’re happier, alternate timelines) or had departed on their own terms (Jamie and Bernard had gotten married, decided it was time to settle down and start a family). After all of those adventures, Jae had been sad for a while, but not like this. It had never felt like something passing. For the first time, the TARDIS worries that Jae won’t be able to recover from this.

 

The kiss is soft, warm, not imposing, not wanting or superceding itself--much like Wonpil’s confession, much like Wonpil himself.

“I love you,” Wonpil had said, plain and simple, like he was telling Jae that he wanted to stop by the 1900s to give Van Gogh a flower. (They had, as a matter of fact, done that.) “You don’t have to feel the same or do anything about it, I just wanted you to know.”

And with that, Wonpil had reached up, a hand poised gently on Jae’s chest, and kissed him softly.

It was sweet. Jae had felt himself blush.

He knew that this is the closest thing to _that_ kind of love that he had gotten in centuries--and then fear works itself back in: what if he can’t offer that? What if he doesn’t want _more_ , only more of what they already have which is a friendship unlike any other: a friendship of reading to one another at night, of holding each other through nightmares, of making each other laugh by saying stupid things, of picking on each other, of being there for each other through thick and thin, each adventure that comes more exciting than the next?

Would Wonpil leave, then?

“Pil, I need time to think about it.”

Wonpil grinned then. “Take all the time in the world.”

 

 

Many a time since, Jae finds himself thinking that if he could do it again, if he had known that his compliance in not answering was rooted in the premise of time that neither of them had together, if he had known how they only had a little over an hour left, then he would have rushed into it headlong even if it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, even if what he wanted was a more watered-down version of what Wonpil had in mind. Companionship, desire--anything for a friend. He would have let Wonpil have what he wanted, at least once.

After, he avoids Scotland, avoids lakes, avoids being awake at sunrise, avoids looking at the moon reflected on water.

After, he hides the piano away in one of the spare rooms, locking it in until further notice.

It takes years, it takes forever.

Wonpil was with him for five years, gone in the blink of an eye--a forgotten angel touching him a split-second before Jae could turn to look, to hold them both in place.

 

It’s a little after Jae more or less gets back to his routine, after he’s able to pull himself back together--no more companions, much to the TARDIS’s relief--and saves a couple more planets from dying, fights off a couple more hostile spirits, solves a couple more disagreements between peoples and species, brokers a couple more intergalactic deals. It’s in the year 1999 and he’s in pursuit of something simpler than usual: an underground alchemical alien base hidden under a hospital somewhere in Glasgow.

He steals the Doctor’s uniform, finds a way to weedle himself into the medical archives and pilfer himself a random chart before realizing that he’s gotten the coordinates wrong, that the time was 2999, that the place was slightly north of Glasgow. He sighs, and looks down in exasperation at the chart in his hands. A detail so small that if you blinked, you’d miss it.

Name: Wonpil Yoon

Age: 93

Gender: M

Birthdate: April 28, 1909

Reason for admission: Recovery from a triple bypass.

_It can’t be._

But how many people are named Wonpil in Glasgow?

_Maybe he changed his name._

East Wing, Room 809.

Even apart from his ship, Jae feels the TARDIS warning him: don’t get too close. Don’t meddle in the Angels’ negative energy. Don’t meddle when he’s this old, his body won’t withstand the paradox that you have to offer.

Just a glance, then, Jae decides, bargaining with himself. Just to see how he is.

He takes the steps two at a time--before he knows it he’s running: up the stairs, down the hall, pausing outside Room 308 to peek in through the window. Jae feels tears gather in his eyes, brim over and spill down his cheeks as he sees his old friend’s face, still handsome albeit seeped in the tea of old age, rinsed in the tides of time. Inside, there are kids playing at the foot of the bed, a young woman who looks too much like her father to be anyone else but Wonpil’s daughter sitting by the window, reading a book. There are flowers on the bedside table and a giant _Get Well Soon_ sign hanging over the bed, bright balloons tied to the chair.

Jae lifts a hand gently to the glass, smiling.

_So, you were happy._

“Jae?”

Jae turns around, coming face to face with an elderly gentleman about to enter the room: he has deep-set eyes, gray hair curled into a soft fringe that falls just right into his eyes. He’s holding flowers, a gold band sitting on the ring finger of his hand.

Jae frowns. “I’m sorry, Sir. Do I know you?”

“It’s me!” The older man grins expectantly.

Jae blinks. “Sorry, you must have me mistaken for s--”

“--ah,” Mr. Yoon says, nodding. “I see. You haven’t met me yet. ”

Jae smiles. “I suppose not. Are you--Wonpil’s…?”

“Husband, yeah,” Mr. Yoon nods. “Took a while but we got there. And you? I--well, you’ll understand when you meet me but I hope you’re happy with him.”

_Him?_

“With who?”

Mr. Yoon grins. “No spoilers.”

“Right,” Jae nods. “Was it a good life? Did Wonpil have a good life?”

Mr. Yoon’s smile widens. “It was wonderful. I know you won’t understand this yet--but I think we traded our grief and grievances for our biggest joys, you and I. Just wait for it.”

Jae tilts his head slightly. “It isn’t everyday a Time Lord gets lectured on waiting.”

Mr. Yoon shrugs, nods toward the room. “Wonpil told me about the timelines thing, about the not being able to change anything thing. Is there anything you’d like me to tell him?”

Jae glances at Wonpil through the glass--he’s waking up, smiling at his daughter. His eyes are still beautiful, his smile still the brightest thing in the room.

“Just that I loved him so, so much. He was my bestfriend. And I’m glad he’s had a great life.”

Mr. Yoon nods. “Got it. You headed anywhere after this?”

Jae shrugs, grinning. “You know. All of time and space.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wonpil has a happy ending, don’t worry. Wait for it in DoPil week coming this May. :) 
> 
> Read the other part in this series here - https://archiveofourown.org/works/13868178/chapters/31902909


End file.
